In numerous home workshops throughout the country, handymen store miscellaneous hardware in cans, jars, or other similar containers. When the handyman needs a particular piece of hardware, he must take the time to clear a space in his workroom and dump the hardware out of the receptacle onto a clean, flat surface where it may be quickly sorted through until the desired piece is found. Such a practice is somewhat undesirable due to the time required to clear a space to accomplish this task. Thus, it is desirable to provide a portable, storable sorting space to accomplish this task.
In addition, once the hardware has been dumped onto the surface and the desired piece found, the handyman must then pick up all of the pieces and return them to the receptacle or scrape them over the edge of the surface while trying to catch them in the receptacle. Both of these practices are somewhat frustrating to a person who is involved with another project from which he does not wish to divert time.
Numerous storage containers are known in the art that include a plurality of drawers that store sorted hardware. However, few of these storage containers provide an easy method or location for sorting the hardware to be stored therein. Of course, one could always transport the entire storage container to a work site and sort hardware into the container as one works. However, this rarely occurs due to the time required to accomplish the sorting and the often-required need to clean or de-grease hardware before it is stored. Thus, the more frequent occurrence is that a person uses one or two containers to collect various hardware, but does not sort it for some time thereafter, if ever. At such a time, the portable sorting surface is particularly useful.
Another need for a portable sorting device arises when a storage container holds a particular item, but in numerous different sizes. In this situation, the handyman must dig through the container, hoping to correctly locate the desired size item or dump the entire contents out and look through it while it is spread out and easy to see. In this situation, the handyman also confronts the problem of where to dump the contents and how to easily return the contents back into the storage container. Thus, a need exists for a portable sorting device that includes means for easily returning hardware or other small objects into a storage container having a relatively narrow opening.